Lemon a day

4″ x 2″ 10cm x 5cm approx

Another in the leaf series. Took a walk today inthe woods , wonderful sunshine cutting across the landscape and reaching right into the woodland. It was warm enough to lift the scent of the Daphne bhuloa allowing it to drift along paths and avenues from where it called me like  a siren might a sailor. Silly to plant it next to the wintersweet with its less exotic smell I thought,  a mistake I have also made -I realised as I got home.

#191

size 4″ x 2.5″  10cm x 6cm approx.

#190

size h 7″ x 6″ 17cm x 15cm

There has been a long gap when I have written and painted nothing. In my defence it was Christmas and then I was ill.

Christmas approached and as always the creative life was swamped by the mundane. There were presents to make, cakes to make, cards to send, lovely aunts social life to mend and her medical needs to be addressed, husbands dumped friend to console, and then there were the floors, the loos and the bedrooms which all needed my attention-in addition there was still the shopping and ordering.

I have a major difficulty with being ill in this household and it’s to do with timing; ideally being ill should be a solitary activity much attended by concerned (healthy and vigorous) loved ones, that is in my dreams. Now my husband seems able to time his occasional bouts of man flu so that he is able to announce to the world, work, and his closest relatives that he is really ill as he collapses sideways onto the red settee with the remote control. He varies his illness by retiring to bed with a book on Greek Naval Warfare or the Odyssey and calls for his basic needs, conversation and fussing whenever he feels like it. This continues until he is fit enough to get up and go back to work….protesting that he is not yet fully recovered ….he then comes home and collapses sideways onto the red settee with the remote and is exhausted. He is of course excused household duties until he is at least a little better i.e. well enough not to want to come home from work and collapse sideways onto the red settee. I may be imagining this but it is possible that his episodes of ill health tend to finish when he has exhausted the recorded episodes of Startrek, Frost and Lewis. This Christmas holiday he must have been truly unwell as I found him watching a recording of a Harry Potter film followed by two of the Narnia films. I am quite worried however as we were given a swanky new set top box at Christmas which is much more effective in recording whole series of programmes and has a HUGE memory; thus we will soon have every single broadcast episode of Frost etc .

I got ill first this year for a change and by rights should have been able to collapse gracefully onto the red settee etc. etc. But I mistimed it badly, I started to get ill on Christmas Day and having found out on that morning that we were to have 13 at lunch the next day I was forced to battle on. There were arrangements in place for the day after Boxing Day as well -eight for lunch. Note to self , do not volunteer to entertain three days in a row at Christmas or at any other time. The last day was fine as there was woodpigeon pie ready to go in the fridge which we had with bubble and squeak made from left over mash and sprouts with chestnuts. Once all people had gone home and I felt able to actually be ill as opposed to falling asleep in the middle of things I was overtaken by diy dad who having done enough diy to empty all the cupboards in the house, caught my chest infection. Of course he was worse than me and needed attention, as he recovered No2 son came back from a days shopping with the winter vomiting. We have managed to contain his personal pandemic this time ( his best being 11 people infected)and the only person who has succumbed this time is …well of course its me.

#187

size 4″ x 6″ 12cm x 15cm approx.

These are the little slices of dried cep which make the most fantastic soups, sauces and scrambled egg possible. They are such good quality, being home made , that a slice can be crumbled into scrambled egg just before serving or even just eaten as it is. They have none of the stringy dirty look of the commercial dried cep you see in the supermarket and elsewhere. I like their shape too – an angular folded version of the slices which went into the dessicator.

We have collected about eight kilos of cep in the last ten days, most has been dried as the crop can never be guaranteed and I would hate to run out.

#186

SOLD to another mushroom hunter!

size 5in x 5 in, 12cm x 12cm approx

I went with no1 son, who is very fond of mushrooms for breakfast, to see if anything had come up…There was, as the day before, nothing… but on the way out of the woods I nearly trod on this little beauty. The little side one is often pictured in German and Polish illustrations, not to be outdone I painted it.

No2 son has cooked his goose over a stuffed chicken thigh recipe for food DT (that is what they call lessons in cookery at school in the UK now). Having made all the effort to buy his raw ingredients I then spent the evening reminding him to get it all prepared for the morning.” Don’t leave it to eleven o’clock!”, I said, not thinking that he would leave it until 8.15 the following morning…I was out of sorts for everything , late, furious and forgetful. Boning out chicken thighs in the morning hustle when I could have BOUGHT ready boned had I not been told to get them bone in is so far from my idea of fun there will be consequences for this.

#185 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

#185

detail of “ Lemon yellow and pink, leaves.”

These are the leaves of one of the lacecap hydrangeas , there is something quite surreal about their pink flush on lemon yellow. A painting which is larger than most of those in this blog, it measures :

22cm x 30cm 9″ x 12″ approx.

#183

This is a tiny picture the leaf is painted at about lifesize.

Summer holidays: life one long round of slogging round Sainsburys and prising children off their electronic boxes. There are nice flowers in the garden but for some reason I am painting the leaves that fall from the little pear tree.

Only two more episodes of the Hour left to run….I could cry. If Hector is to be believed then my dad must have been in MI6 as I swear his raincoat, or gaberdine as he might have called it, looked just like the one worn by the ill-fated Mr Kish. He always seem to wear it with a trilby which is still a good look in my book, but then he was always hopelessly out of date only giving up wearing trourers with turn-ups when Oxford bags came in in the seventies…ie when they revived a look he had finally had enough of it and submitted to modernity…well almost… he wasn’t going to update the shoes or vests you understand.

#178

These are the best blueberries I have ever grown. The secret is to keep the perishing birds off without netting the birds and perishing them.

A painting!

this painting can be bought from ( apologies for photo on ETSY page there is a glitch):

http://www.etsy.com/listing/88793554/beetroot-in-a-bunch-watercolour-painting

Beetroot in a bunch

22cm x 15cm, 9″ x 6″

There is very little time in the day when there are so many plants to water and crops to pick, I do not try and grow beetroot as I am the only person besides lovely aunt who really likes it, so these are bought and no less pretty for it.

The allotment has peas and beans in astonishing variety at the moment, diy dad has dug out his early carrots and the maincrop carrots are coming up. I have a forest of flat leaved parsley in the salad bed and the first tomatoes are ripening. The first autumn cyclamen is out as well….excuse me but the proms are only just begun, cyclamen???

#177

 Click here to purchase   size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm

There are good times of year and bad times of year. This is not my favourite in many ways; the hour has changed and we all feel it. Meals feel necessary earlier as the stomach clocks are struggling to adjust. The weather is mild which is a bonus, the house is warm all day following a short blast from the radiators in the morning, which is a vindication of the warm roof insulation. I love the air and the light at this time of year. There are times when the colours are brighter than anything spring or summer can offer. Hence the leaves in todays painting. There are rows of trees on the drive to school every day that are just glowing at the moment.

I did do a painting yesterday but when I showed it to DIY Dad he asked which way up it was supposed to go…all very well if you are an abstract artist but I’m not.

The nasty neutral magnolia paintwork on the walls in this room did not scrub up well, we therefore repainted it. The walls are still neutral but the carpet will be bright or dark. I know carpet is not fashionable but we have solid floors and carpet is warmer. In fact the floors are the least ecological part of this house as they are only insulated in the kitchen diner. A good carpet will have to stand in for insulation in this room. The walls are now a very pale grey with a warm tone to it. The name is a marketers dream…for a certain section of society…’Egyptian Cotton’. It is not the colour of calico or unbleached cotton or indeed bleached cotton, mind you I have yet to see a Magnolia flower that is the colour of magnolia paint. ‘Its not magnolia’, I think they could call a paint that and do just as well.

 Mainly its done(the room that is,apart from the carpet). I ,being mindful of the age of the children ,asked for everyones views on the carpet,No2 son wants a sample very like the old carpet (stupidly pale and neutral),no1 son cannot see the point and thinks the old carpet should be patched (possibly using the samples from the carpet shop?), husband thinks red would be nice but not so red it looks like we are expecting the Queen. I want aubergine but I know that it too will show the dirt. Like all consultation processes on the modern era it will be a scam, I will go back to the carpet shop and choose what I like, come home and point out a) all their ideas had flaws,yes they were rubbish, b) in two weeks they will have forgotten what colour it is and will have covered it in sweet wrappers anyway.

#150 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

Blueberry has the most extraordinary red and yellow leaves before they drop.

apple leaves in the garden

Day One hundred and thirty three  

   size 5 in x 5 in 13cm x 13cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

Today I am considering the subject of my blog, I have been asked to do some Morning Glory, I quite fancy doing an outdoor picture but it will probably rain on me, and then again there are flowers and apples in the garden which I like but haven’t put in a blog painting yet…some days to have plenty of choice seems a luxury and on other days it is too much. I have decided upon one of the stored pears ,you can tell its been stored its gone a little crumpled.

I made a big tray of apple sortofshortbread this morning for the weekend, but it smelt so lovely that when my neighbour popped round to look at the builders progress on their house( getting there) we got stuck into it with a cup of coffee. Apparently her daughter K. reads the blog which is lovely to hear.

The shortbreadsortof is an attempt to pass off more apples on the family in an acceptable form. I made a mix half way between shortbread and pastry using butter and stork and plain flour (1lb flour,3/4 shortening,1/2 sugar,1 cup raisins, two large aromatic eaters diced,pinch of salt…I used the Ellison’s Orange, but Cox or anything suitable for a French Tarte au Pommes would do. It’s quite crumbly but tastes good*. There are many opinions on what should go in a real French Tarte au Pommes, something like Calville Blanc d’Hiver apple is classic, it has a very strong flavour and thin slices cook but do not break up, however modern writers including French recipe sites suggest Golden Delicious or Granny Smith ,these will look right but they will not have the intense flavour of the older apples which are used by better restaurants in France. If you tend to think that Tarte au Pommes is OK but a bit insipid I suggest you seek out one made with the sort of apples around which the recipe was created. I wonder how many old recipes we miss the point of as we do not have access to the right varieties of fruit and vegetable to make them special. Ellison’s Orange is actually a cross between a French Calville Blanc d’Ete and an English Cox so it probably is a good candidate for a proper Tarte au Pommes. The apple can seem dry as soon as it starts to overripen , but that I think is the sort of characteristic required.

Last night I put apples in the salad and in the pudding and the night before I made Bolognese sauce with fresh garden tomatoes ( they thought it was marvellous…no of course they didn’t they moaned that it was different from the standard brew).

Method for recipe if you would like to try:

Put the flour and the shortening and the salt into a food processor, blitz until it is mixed and starting to stick together in lumps.

Mix in the raisins and the diced apple, press into a lined tray bake for half an hour in a medium oven or until it is firm and beginning to brown in places. Cut up when nearly cool and eat, but you could guess that bit.

#133 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog